U.S. lacked expertise in oil spill control, panel says

WASHINGTON -- The federal government's lack of expertise in how to control an oil well blowout led to the public impression that BP was calling the shots in the early response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, according to the staff of the National Oil Spill Commission, which recommended Friday that the federal government be required to develop its own in-house source control expertise and that all future deepwater drilling plans demonstrate that the operator has access to immediately-deployable containment technology.

Image from BP videoOil and gas spew from a yellowish, broken pipe 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico in this view from the BP spillcam.

The commission staff also concluded that BP and the government did not put proper emphasis on making an accurate estimate of the flow-rate of the spill early on, and that the lack of that accurate information undermined and slowed efforts to cap the well and further compromised public confidence in the government's competence in contending with the catastrophe.

Members of the commission said that in the future, the government ought to take charge of making the flow-rate estimate and should not rely on information developed by and for the oil company responsible for the spill.

"if it gets the information from the responsible party it is reading from somebody else's script," said Commission Co-Chair William Reilly.

According to the staff report, "underestimation of the flow may have been a key reason that BP misinterpreted the top kill's failure as evidence of a well-integrity problem. Because of concerns about well integrity, BP and the government delayed capping the well."

Commissioners were also told by their deputy chief counsel, Priya Aiyar - and seemed a little stunned - that BP is likely to argue that the total volume of the spill was far less than the more than 200 million gallons estimated by the government. The size of the spill will be factored into how much BP owes in fines for the disaster.

"I think they are going to argue that it was 20 to 50 percent less," said Aiyar.

Friday's meeting is the last formal gathering of the commission before it presents its final report to President Obama on Jan. 11. For the last two days, the commission has been hearing staff recommendations on the causes and lessons of the disaster that will form the basis of its report to the president.

On Friday morning, Aiyar presented a series of recommendations on oil spill containment reflecting the conclusion that both industry and government were essentially flying blind in the immediate aftermath of the blowout of the Macondo well on April 20.

"At the outset of the spill," according to the staff report, "beyond attempting to activate the blowout preventer and drilling a relief well, there were no proven options for controlling a deepwater blowout."

To their credit, Aiyar said, "during the response, BP was able to to develop new source control technologies in a hurry."

In that respect, said Cherry Murray, a member of the commission who is dean of he Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, "it was a success story in that the well was controlled, the government got up to speed, and BP and the industry working with BP invented things on the fly"

On the government end, the staff report concluded that "once (Energy) Secretary (Steven) Chu's science team, the national labs, and other sources of scientific expertise became involved, the government was able to force BP to consider contingencies and justify its own path forward."

But, the report continued, "although government officials found input form industry officials valuable, industry interactions with the government were disorganized. Issues such as conflicts of interest, sharing of proprietary information, and potential liability for participants were never resolved."